"My efforts as a 'Hirundologist' have been largely focused in three areas:

• maintenance of the huge database that provides access to more than 15 years of data on tree swallows in the Ithaca area, as well as the data from our network of citizen banders who make our study of natal dispersal possible,
• assisting in the organization and execution of the field program each spring and summer in Ithaca, and
• working on the development of Golondrinas de las Americas, the network of research sites stretching from Alaska to Argentina.

The evolution of patterns of dispersal in birds. Building on data gathered over more than 15 years on the population of swallows in the Ithaca area, data are now being gathered across an 800 km wide circle centered on the Ithaca sites, involving a large-scale network of cooperators that grew out of the Cornell Nest Box Network (a project co-directed by Winkler, along with André Dhondt and John Fitzpatrick at the Laboratory of Ornithology). One of several objectives of this research is to fully characterize the patterns of dispersal in a land-breeding passerine with potentially unrestricted choices in terms of dispersal destinations.

I have been deeply involved with re-designing the increasingly complex database used to store data and manage the network of banders. Each year more than 6000 banding records must be integrated into the database, including all breeding data, measurements of adults and nestlings, and the locations of all nesting attempts. I have also been working with Winkler and several colleagues on the development of specialized statistical methods for analyzing dispersal in continuous landscapes."